CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ

THE MILITARY USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES IN THE FIGHT…

Introduction In the face of the development of new technologies the means and methods of warfare are changing, and more remotely piloted devices, or unmanned aerial vehicles (hereinafter – UAVs), appear on the battlefield. Therefore, new challenges for the evaluation of such war means appear, as they need to be tested against the long-standing principles of international humanitarian law (hereinafter – IHL). The use of drones, or UAVs, is most widely used for the practice of targeted killing in the so-called “war on terror”, or in other words, to fight against terrorists and terrorist groups. Legal assessment of the targeted killing can be carried out in accordance with various rules of international law: international humanitarian law, human rights norms, rules of law enforcement operations (which must comply with human rights norms), as well as legal norms of self-defence. It is important to separate the requirements of these norms, but the scope of these norms is overlapping and it is difficult to fully assess the situation without taking into account all aspects of this phenomenon. However, this article will only assess targeted killings in the context of an armed conflict. The purpose of this article will be to assess this practice of targeted killings by UAVs in the context of international humanitarian law, in accordance with the principles of this branch of law. It should be noted that the issue of applicable law relies essentially on the answer to the question of the context in which targeted killings are carried out. Thus, the main question of this research is whether the persons deemed to be terrorists may be fought against and killed using UAVs, and what the leading principles of IHL in this domain are. Petra Ditrichová-Ochmannová in her article “International Law and the Use of Armed Drones: Where is the Controversy?” 1 in the 2016 issue od this journal developed a discussion on the regimes of international law applicable for the use of drones, or UAVs, and the tensions and implications of applicability of these regimes. This study follows the discussion by going further and analysing the applicable rules of one of the regimes applicable – that is, of international humanitarian law. Unmanned aerial vehicles and their use for military purposes Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned aircraft systems (UASes), informally named as drones, are flying robots. “The aircrafts may be remotely controlled or can fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems working in conjunction with onboard sensors and GPS.” 2 Unmanned aerial vehicles increase the possibility to apply military force where the states have a lack of resources or the will to act without access to “unmanned” technology. “This increased optionality is particularly impactful in the so-called “hybrid” and “grey zone” conflicts, the types of ambiguous interactions short of full-scale war that are typical in today’s security environment.” 3 1 DITRICHOVÁ-OCHMANNOVÁ, P. International Law and the Use of Armed Drones: Where is the Controversy? Czech Yearbook of Public & Private International Law, Vol. 7, 2016: 238-252. 2 drone (unmanned aerial vehicle, UAV) The TechTarget network. https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/ definition/drone, [accessed 22 May 2018]. 3 SANDER, A., Wargame report, Game of drones http://drones.cnas.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Game-of- Drones-Proliferated-Drones.pdf, [accessed 22 May 2018]. 1.

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